Performance II - Study Guide / 2012
Performance II - Study Guide / 2012
PERFORMANCE II Study Guide
Jorge Luis Morejón, Ph.D., Lecturer
December 4, 2012
University of the West Indies, St. Augustine.
Trinidad and Tobago
Unit One: Physical Theatre
1. Which are the four dimensions of Physical Theatre?
They are:
• Playwright
• Director
• Actor
• Audience
2. What do Physical Theatre groups have in common?
• Collaboration between all the members in the creation of the product, whether working with a text as the base or devising?
• The creativity of the actors is of paramount importance.
• And this creativity comes from the actors' bodies.
• From the start of rehearsal, the impetus is from the physical - the bodies' ways of telling a story, or expressing emotion.
• Companies are experimental and playful in approach, seeking for the accidental discoveries that they make which will create a link with the audience's imagination.
3. What are some of the formulations of the Actor’s Training
Meyerhold’s actor's training involved:
• Emulating the plasticity of the body of clowns, acrobats and the like.
• The use of Commedia for inspiration in regards to its technical ability, make-believe qualities, potential for entertainment and the brilliance of its technical skills.
• Meyerhold's students learned an extraordinarily wide set of skills, including gymnastics, dance, fencing, music and juggling, as well as theatre history, a variety of styles of acting, Commedia and, of course, what he called Bio-mechanics.
• The students were expected to end up proficient in at least one instrument. They did many 'études' in which the bare bones of a scenario would be set and they must improvise with it.
• The voice was not neglected either, despite his emphasis on the body.
• Meyerhold tried to train all-round actors, good at anything and able to perform playfully and at once, as the Commedia artists did.
Unit Two: Peter Brook
4. What is Holy Theatre?
A term created by Peter Brook to refer to what he also calls “The Theatre of the Invisible-Made-Visible: the notion that the stage is a place where the invisible can appear.” This, as he explains, has a deep hold on our thoughts. We are all aware that most of life escapes our senses: a most powerful explanation of the various arts is that they talk of patterns which we can only begin to recognize when they manifest themselves as rhythms or shapes. The theatre of the Invisible-Made-Visible is the last forum where idealism is still an open question and where the face of the invisible is perceived through an experience on the stage that transcends the experience in life.
5. How does Brook connect Theatre with its sacred origins?
He states that the best of the romantic theatre, the civilized pleasures of the opera and the ballet were in any event gross reductions of an art sacred in its origins. Over the centuries the Orphic Rites turned into the Gala Performance—slowly and imperceptibly the wine was adulterated drop by drop.
6. What are Brook’s recommendations?
He says:
“We need to stage true rituals, but for rituals that could make theatre-going an experience that feeds our lives, true forms are needed. These are not at our disposal, and conferences and resolutions will not bring them our way.”
He seems to suggest, based on the examples he gives, that theatre with small means, intense work, rigorous discipline and absolute precision move in the direction of staging true rituals. They are also theatres for small audiences.
We have to search for holiness in tradition, from a source, from a constant. This constant can be a vital symbol that links the visible and the invisible worlds, a junction. Theatre can earth the invisible as part of the second step of a metamorphosis which includes the symbol first, the actor second.
Let the actor become a human vehicle for possession, a godly container, a form for an otherwise invisible god. This is indeed the power of the actor; he/she is someone who as a godly symbol can still be accessible to an audience.
Unit Three: Tomas Gonzalez Perez7.
Explain Tomas Gonzalez Perez’s view on ritual that is internalized as opposed to any form that comes from outside.
Internalized is genuine. It drives the man/woman out of real life so he/she can reveal the secret of his real life. Ritual from the outside fails with this proposition; it stays on the surface, full of arbitrary colors, disproportionate beads, steps that are not the dance, representation without "possession" or trance. Thus, it becomes an "attractive" spectacle for tourists, goods to earn foreign currency, instead of vehicle to gain access to human essence, the elements of nature and magic.
8. What is the difference between Europe and The Americas and Caribbean in terms their archetypes?
In Europe as the result of a great confluence of many races, their numinous archetypes do not exist anymore. Their archetypes have become symbols of basic personality traits, whereas in the new world, in the cults "transvalued" by American syncretism and fusion, numinous archetypes have been saved, kept alive. The numinous archetypes are still the essential man/woman which is to say, all man/woman.
9. What is important about the encounter of man/woman with his/her own prehistory?
The encounter of man/woman with his own prehistory releases that which was repressed. Prehistory (rituality) becomes a matter of here and now, of the man/woman himself/herself and his/her conscious actions and, therefore, it does not have to wait for the establishment and consolidation of any regime. Man/woman, at the time of a single existence, can achieve "knowledge of self" and make acting from his/her essence the door to the recurrent recreation of the marvelous in the real.
10. What is problematic about the European adoption of the mastery characteristic of the execution of Easter representation?
The mastery which characterizes the execution of Eastern representations has been adopted by Europeans, but without the systems of thought that originated them and give them content (Taoism, Hinduism, Zen Buddhism). By doing this they have evaded the rigor of training, as well as the age in which actors and dancers have started to achieve it. This results in imitation or poor adaptation of Eastern techniques to a new context, which results in a hybrid spectacle, non syncretic, where there is only a peaceful coexistence of all the elements.
11. What seems to be Gonzalez Perez’s recommendation for Latin American and Caribbean theatre artists?
Gonzalez Perez recommends looking for the foundations of our creations and theorization in the indigenous context, building our scenic poetry from structures and forms obtained from that same background. He tries to encourage the artist to search for his/her identity in his/her own context first. In order to discriminate and not accept all sorts of guidelines and copy models that come from outside, we must be willing to embrace optimum artistic training to transform them and assimilate them according to our aesthetic needs.
12. How can the theatre maker avoid theatre’s degeneration?
Avoiding copying the results of European theatre’s exploration" which is nothing but a copy of the copy. When working with rituality, one cannot put aside that which is autochthonous.
13. What is ironic about the relationship between some theatre makers in Latin America and the Caribbean and some Europeans?
The routes taken by both creators is ironic because while Latin American and Caribbean theatre makers go to Europe to seek guidance for their stage work; Europeans study our cults and our African rites in search for essence and content.
14. What do we need to get rid of in order to make the trip in reverse, from Europe to the Caribbean?
We must learn how to rid ourselves of our inferiority complex and learn from our own culture to become "someone" not in search of a parent but in search of sons. “To the man's home we cannot arrive with empty bodies.”
Comments
Post a Comment